


Travel Away Home

by DestielsDestiny



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Child Abandonment, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, Inspired by Fanfiction, M/M, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2015-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-10 15:49:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4397858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestielsDestiny/pseuds/DestielsDestiny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even after twenty years, Sherlock is still so sure the Doctor is coming back one day. Nothing has ever broken Mycroft’s heart more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Travel Away Home

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Thy Mother's Glass](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/130736) by Sciosophia. 



> A/N: I own nothing.  
> This story is inspired by Sciosophia’s brilliant “Thy Mother’s Glass”, which is amazing and you should all go read, and the sometimes utilized fanfic idea that the Holmes boys are the Ponds’ sons, and I give full credit to those authors for creating the original premise of the Holmes’ growing up on the Tardis. However, I have made every effort to make this story a unique work that stands on its own.   
> In this story, the identity of the Holmes’ parents is left deliberately vague, it is simply based on the premise that Sherlock and Mycroft were raised in the TARDIS by their parents and eventually left behind by the Doctor to fulfill the fixed points of their destinies as Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes.

Somehow, it takes Sherlock twenty years to ask Mycroft if he misses their parents. Granted, they are kind of dysfunctional like that as a general rule, but Sherlock asks it with such seriousness, out of the blue and suddenly, that it gives Mycroft some pause. 

There are so many other times in their lives Sherlock could have asked his older brother this question. 

When Mycroft was fourteen to his little brother’s seven, teaching Sherlock the finer points of pick pocketing because they can’t risk homeless shelters or soup kitchens at their age but they still have to eat somehow, and everything he knows might have come from reading Oliver Twist one too many times, but Mycroft’s still good enough at it instantly to earn more than some full paying jobs the adults they pilfer from have. 

When Sherlock turns ten and becomes old enough to realize his brother puts on so much makeup for some other reason than dress up. 

When Mycroft turned eighteen, and officially got himself a shiny new job and shinier guardianship papers. 

When Sherlock turned up on Lestrade’s doorstep at sixteen, strung out on a whirl of drugs and laughing his head off at his brother’s new hickeys. 

When Jack Harkness flitted briefly back into their lives around the time Mycroft began quietly taking over the government, and didn’t recognize either of them before flitting back out. 

When Sherlock turned twenty-one, and officially changed his name to Holmes, on every document in existence anywhere in the parts of time and space he could get his hands on. 

When Sherlock solves his first case by himself at fourteen, putting a murderer behind bars and getting his brother a date in the same evening. 

When Sherlock met John. When Greg and Mycroft got married. When the Daleks showed up, again. When the Cybermen did. Canary Warf. Planets in the sky. 

Reichenbach. 

So many, many times. 

But somehow, it’s this moment instead, Sherlock leaning casually across Mycroft’s ultra-expensive countertop, artfully sprawling in a designer housecoat, toast crumbs falling by the wayside, Greg whistling in the other room. So domestic. 

Mycroft looks at his little brother for the longest time across the top of his British bulldog coffee mug-and no Gregory, they still aren’t keeping that little monster you brought home, Sherlock is more than enough thank you very much-, seeing and not seeing him. 

Sherlock holds his gaze steadily, like he has since birth, since uttering his first word at two and taking off across the deck of the console room, making good on his promise and following in the Doctor’s large footsteps. 

He sees a sickly eight year old, too thin and coughing, clinging to the only family he has left in the present world. 

He sees a laughing ten year old, a dog’s tongue licking all over his face, giggles pealing like bells across an abandoned alley. 

He sees the shadow of a twenty year old prodigy, sweeping his gaze from his little brother across a corpse to meet the gentle baby blues watching him, no idea he’s just met the love of his life. 

He sees a darkened warehouse and reluctant pride in the face of so much quiet bravery and brilliance. 

He sees a strung out seventeen year old, waving a gun around his own head, screaming silent tears about a pain he can no longer even name. 

He sees a seven year old standing frozen in time, watching a lonely street corner entirely devoid of blue. 

He sees that boy grown up twenty years, standing on that same corner no less empty, no less frozen. 

He sees the blinding brilliance of a little boy who grew up to be all his hero hoped he’d be. 

He sees his brother. He sees their son. 

He’s just not sure who the “they” are anymore.

He remembers being sixteen and so scared, alone and friendless, no idea how to do anything. He remembers having nowhere to turn, no one to ask for help. He remembers wanting, more than anything, to just go home. To have his family back. 

He’s never stopped wanting that, Mycroft will fully acknowledge that. But, breaking their staring contest to sweep his gave across the posh-homey kitchen to include the doorway Gregory’s just come through, trailed by an army doctor holding the little street rat that he’s starting to admit privately they’ll probably end up keeping, if only because he reminds Mycroft of Sherlock at that age, before swinging back to stare into his brother’s eyes, he lets himself wonder if somewhere along the way, he already got what he always wanted, without ever realizing it. 

Mycroft will always miss his parents. He will always miss the Doctor. He tells his brother that, that morning over scones and marmalade-how very British they have become for children of time. Of course he misses them, he will say. Always has and always will. 

What he doesn’t add out loud, never has and never will, but can’t quite help himself from thinking, is that maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t want them back either. Not anymore. 

\--

When you run with the doctor, it feels like it will last forever. But no matter how hard you try, you can’t run forever. 

\--

They find their parents’ graves twenty one years after they last saw them, in linear time. Neither of them cry. It’s a relief, somehow, somewhat. Knowing. It’s a relief. 

Mycroft wonders if he repeats that enough times, he might actually start to believe it. 

Greg ties Sherlock to the couch for three days-literally, he uses soft cuff police restraints. It’s a testament to how okay Sherlock actually is that he stays. Or maybe it’s just a testament to how much he cares about Gregory. Either way, Sherlock makes it through the revelation of their parents’ deaths clean and physically whole, and really that’s more than Mycroft could have ever hoped to ask for, so he’ll take it. 

The discovery changes absolutely nothing in their lives. Nothing at all. 

Mycroft repeats that a lot too. He doesn’t really believe it either. 

Mycroft’s never resented their parents. He’s a little grateful actually, the amazing life they gave him and Sherlock. 

He remembers enough half furtive conversations, enough sad looks cast their way by the Doctor, like he’s looking at something that’s already died, enough wistful kisses and extra hugs from their parents, enough blank spaces on security footage and notable Torchwood absences to know they weren’t unintentionally abandoned. 

They were left behind on purpose. 

If meeting Jack again as an adult taught Mycroft anything, it was that he and Sherlock were most certainly not alone. In being abandoned by the Doctor that is. 

Granted it was unusual considering they were children, but it’s still what the Doctor does. Leaves people behind. Makes them better and then leaves them behind to make others better. 

Even in his bitterness, and Mycroft may understand the reasons but he’s still plenty bitter thanks, he’s forced to acknowledge that the Doctor’s strategy pays off. He and Sherlock and Jack are living proof of that. 

And, as he sits in his quiet kitchen sharing a morning with his family, Mycroft can’t help but be grateful for the life they gave him. For letting him live it. For forcing him to live it. 

He wouldn’t trade it. 

\--

When you’ve run with the doctor, slowing down again is never quite possible somehow. You might stop running, but you never truly go back to walking. The Holmes brothers live there lives on the move, larger than life and louder than thought. They awe and amaze and shape and change and create and love and save and challenge and command and solve and live at top volume, full throttle. It’s all they’ve ever known. 

They become the heroes they read about as a child, become the men they hope would make their parents-all three of them-proud. 

A normal life is the one adventure the doctor can never have, living day to day, growing old. 

Twenty years and aging beyond recognition pass before those impossible boys see the Doctor again. 

 

When the doctor leaves you behind, you have to learn to live without him again. It’s never easy, if may be the hardest thing you ever do, but it is possible. They are living proof of that. How ever broken.

Still, you never quite stop looking over your shoulder, across the room, along the street, searching every odd face and flare of fashion, every decorative vegetable and fez capturing your attention like a magnet. 

Only a lucky few who’ve run with the doctor see him again. Even fewer run again. 

Mycroft harbours no illusions about their chances of ever seeing the doctor again. Still, he never quite stops looking up. 

\--

On an annual sojourn to an abandoned street corner in London’s east end, one of two brothers stumbles slightly into the other, caught off balance by a wiry, grey haired, dark booted individual resembling nothing so much as a loping stick insect, tearing off around a corner like the fate of the world is at stake. The brother’s look at each other, the elder’s eyes sliding back in time to meet the younger’s, clutching instinctively for a hand that hasn’t been there in twenty years.

They find each other in the empty space in between. 

Grey storms meet grey seas. 

Fingers tighten, energy coursing between the interlocked digits, pulses clicking up steadily, adrenaline pooling. 

The older twirls his umbrella with nothing so much as a flourish, laughter bubbling in the younger’s throat. 

Eyes meet, mouths open, and one word spills out, for once in perfect harmony, as they launch forward like a spring that’s been twenty odd years in the coiling suddenly released. 

“Run!”


End file.
